On Creativity

Creativity is fundamental to innovation and to life. It is a God-given gift that many of us too quickly overlook, or forget to maximize. And while you might think that as you enter adulthood you have lost that creative energy that you once had while a child that is not the case. In workshops we conduct with adult learners, quickly we see improvements in creative power of 80-100 per cent as they are taught helpful techniques that once again tap their creative powers. See, you have not lost your creative capacity; we all have it in spades. We just often too quickly rely on linear skills, rather than lateral ones. Or, to put it another way, we don’t engineer situations where the right-side of our brain can really show just how good it is at coming up with new and powerful insights.

Here are three tools and techniques that you might use that will start to allow the right-side of your brain to function how it wants to (I talk about more in my book IMAGINE):

Brainstorming: the easiest technique in your creative tool kit but the one most frequently either not done, or done badly. See, we get immersed in a problem or discussion and we forget to stop and say: ‘Okay, let’s think of how many possible ways we might solve this dilemma?’ Instead, what we normally do, is get a couple of ideas and begin to weigh up their pros and cons. Don’t. Use brainstorming as a technique to fill the page with ideas, then, once that is done, begin to analyze them and judge their respective merits.

Take Time Away: You know it was Leonardo da Vinci who said, ‘It is also good to stop at times and engage in some recreation, for, when you return to your work you will be able to judge it better.’ What he meant was this: we get too close to what we are working on we lose the clarity and originality from seeing things afresh. Take some time away from that project you are working on. Come back to it in a few hours, the next day. You will be surprised how a little space gives you added creative insight. New things that you see that your previous closeness stopped.

Board it Up: I am a big fan of board work. We take a situation and put the whole thing on a blackboard or whiteboard. Rules are relaxed. You can use pictures, words, lines, circles, arrows, whatever – but get the whole problem or issue on a single board. All the aspects. Then, stand back and look at it. What happens? Well, the right side of your brain that is wired for pattern matching kicks into gear. You create the opportunity for your creative juices to flow in a new way, and see connections between aspects of a problem that you could never see by just talking things through.

There are more I could talk about, but using some simple creative techniques enables you to begin to tap afresh those creative capabilities that you have sitting there and gain new insight into the opportunities in front of you.